1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to stabilizing images in a film clip, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for stabilizing images by exposing and using source curves representing global movement detected in a film clip.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a high-end post-production system, stabilization is an important part of the processing pipeline. Even with today's greatest tracking algorithms, automatic stabilization of some film shots is sometimes impossible. There are many causes to this problem including:                excessive/random shaking in the original shot;        occlusion;        movement/distortion of certain elements in the shot; and        general lack of flexibility in the tracking algorithm.        
Typically, each cause leads to a bad result, which means that the result shots will not be 100% stabilized.
In the prior art, to stabilize a sequence of images, the entire sequence of images is analyzed to produce a set of “trackers” that follow entities throughout the sequence. Once analyzed, the user has the option of accepting the analysis and trackers or the user could re-perform the analysis by specifying either a region-of-interest (ROI) or a matte (mask) that would try to isolate the feature that must be tracked. However, whether an ROI or matte is provided, the entire analysis of the sequence of images must be re-performed which consumes a considerable amount of time and processing. In addition, since the features might move within a scene (e.g., throughout the sequence of images), the ROI/mask must be animated prior to the analysis for the analysis to result in a satisfactory result. Such a methodology may still fail to solve the stabilization process, consumes considerable time and resources, and may further present additional problems.
Accordingly, what is needed is a methodology that allows the user to stabilize a sequence of images by modifying/adjusting the results of an analysis of images in a clip without re-analyzing the original images.